By Jeremy Nathan Marks

On Wednesday, April 4, the United States marks a sombre anniversary. Fifty years ago on that date, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot dead on the balcony of the Ambassador Motel in Memphis, Tenn. He was 39 years old.

It is, of course, fitting that the anniversary of both his birth (Jan. 15) and his death should encourage reflection on his legacy. King was a believer in non-violence, agape, forgiveness; his words, actions and philosophy embodied the Christian teaching of “love thy enemy.”

King clung to non-violence even as many around him – former allies – rejected his call for forgiveness and shunned his public denunciations of U.S. conduct in Vietnam, endemic American poverty and persistent institutional racism.

By April 4, 1968, King had become a pariah in many political and journalistic circles and was alienated by former allies such as the New York Times, President Lyndon Johnson, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey and the Washington Post.

Of course, upon news of his death, politicians and newspapers alike rushed to laud and memorialize him, echoing Johnson’s observation that King “symbolized the freedom and faith of America.”

It is well known Johnson authorized FBI surveillance of King, continuing a practice begun under his predecessors, John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

But what of King’s widow, Coretta Scott King? While Coretta King became a well known public figure and activist, it is not fully appreciated what April 4, 1968 meant to her and to her four children.

Coretta King, who was educated at the prestigious Antioch College in Indiana and was a talented musician, writer, thinker and public speaker, consciously stood in the background while her husband became the public face of the civil rights movement.

She was the one at home in Montgomery, Ala., with her infant daughter Yolanda in 1956 when her house was bombed during the famous bus boycott. She also was the one who routinely picked up the telephone, receiving call after call threatening her life, the life of her husband, the lives of her children.

And, of course, she was the one who endured the persistent rumours of her husband’s marital infidelity and harassment by the FBI (who monitored her until 1972).

Still, she managed to raise four children, act as sole breadwinner and remain an activist, establishing the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, among other accomplishments.

When Martin Luther King was killed, his wife was widowed and their four children rendered fatherless. His estate was meagre and did not provide for the future care and education of Yolanda, Dexter, Martin and Bernice. His life was not insured and he and Coretta were not homeowners because King did not believe in wealth acquisition. Neither was he an investor; the King estate contained no mutual funds or investments, and he donated the entirety of his $54,000 Nobel Prize honorarium to the civil rights cause.

It is well that we recall the challenges Coretta King faced in the days and weeks, months and years following her husband’s murder. Far too often historians, journalists and filmmakers ignore the unpaid labour of women and mothers that keeps households solvent and makes the work of their husbands and partners possible. In the King household, the countless sacrifices made by Coretta King remained in the shadows of her husband’s public leadership and only recently have become the subject of historians studying the civil rights movement.

Perhaps in 2018, it is time, at long last, to celebrate the life of the King family and not just the noble and essential work of its patriarch. After all, he acknowledged his career would not have been possible without the love, support, and loyalty of Coretta.

Jeremy Nathan Marks is a London teacher, writer and small business owner.

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